It is not enough to have an individual solution because control shows us that we have never been atomic individuals. This chapter addresses this concern by turning to the cultivation of social groups, or what Deleuze and Guattari call in What is Philosophy? the summoning of a new people. We may make use of a bit of synchronicity here in that “the Great Learning” (Daxue), a short classic Confucian text, declares that the Dao lies in “making the people new” (as well as in making virtue shine and resting in the good). The text then lists a series of steps that connects properly ordering states to basic self-cultivation in a series of steps. It concludes that this process of setting the world in order begins with self-cultivation. If we understand this in an overly individualistic way, it is hopelessly optimistic. If, on the other hand, we understand that self-cultivation is a becoming active in and a taking care of the various processes that shape us, then it is plausible insofar as we can intervene in our social individuation as well (even if it remains idealistic to think that there is a proper order for the world). A dao is already social, but some account is needed of how the social itself can be reshaped by those within it in a way that does more than merely reproducing the subjects of power. This chapter explores this issue by looking at two other accounts of the formation of peoples, Sylvia Wynter’s sociogeny and Li Zehou’s subjectality, and the role technology plays in both. Ultimately, it argues in favor of subjectality’s combination of materialist and aesthetic aspects of group-cultivation.

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Group Cultivation Under Control

  • Michael J. Ardoline

摘要

It is not enough to have an individual solution because control shows us that we have never been atomic individuals. This chapter addresses this concern by turning to the cultivation of social groups, or what Deleuze and Guattari call in What is Philosophy? the summoning of a new people. We may make use of a bit of synchronicity here in that “the Great Learning” (Daxue), a short classic Confucian text, declares that the Dao lies in “making the people new” (as well as in making virtue shine and resting in the good). The text then lists a series of steps that connects properly ordering states to basic self-cultivation in a series of steps. It concludes that this process of setting the world in order begins with self-cultivation. If we understand this in an overly individualistic way, it is hopelessly optimistic. If, on the other hand, we understand that self-cultivation is a becoming active in and a taking care of the various processes that shape us, then it is plausible insofar as we can intervene in our social individuation as well (even if it remains idealistic to think that there is a proper order for the world). A dao is already social, but some account is needed of how the social itself can be reshaped by those within it in a way that does more than merely reproducing the subjects of power. This chapter explores this issue by looking at two other accounts of the formation of peoples, Sylvia Wynter’s sociogeny and Li Zehou’s subjectality, and the role technology plays in both. Ultimately, it argues in favor of subjectality’s combination of materialist and aesthetic aspects of group-cultivation.